This invention is directed to a hand-held motorized specimen cutter which is particularly useful in cutting and lifting specimens from FTA paper and lifting it off of the carrier medium.
A particular paper which is used to retain a biological specimen is called xe2x80x9cFTA paper.xe2x80x9d It is normally mounted upon a carrier which supports the FTA paper and protects the back of the FTA paper from contamination. When it is desired that the specimen be tested for particular biological materials, it is not usual to employ the, entire FTA paper, but cut a small sample therefrom. The cutting of such specimens is presently accomplished by using a cylindrical hollow tube cutter and manually rotating it against the paper. When the correct amount of force and rotation is employed, a disc of the FTA paper is cut and retained in the cutter tube. This cut is accomplished without cutting through the supporting and protecting backing layer. The proper manual technique is hard to learn and can only be learned through practice. Long-term manual rotation of the cutter by the technician is undesirable because it is potentially damaging to the hand, wrist and arm joints. A faster, less damaging and more reliable apparatus is required.
In order to aid in the understanding of this invention, it can be stated in summary form that it is directed to a specimen cutter which comprises a motor-rotated cylindrical tubular specimen cutter. The switch energizing the motor is preferably mounted such that the motor is only energized when the proper cutting force is achieved. The motor is only energized with sufficient energy to rotate the cutter enough to make a single cut. When the cutter is over-forced, it is deenergized.
It is, thus, a purpose and advantage of this invention to provide a specimen cutter which has a cylindrical tube rotating blade cutter which, on demand, is delivered just enough energy to cut a specimen without cutting into the backing layer.
It is a further purpose and advantage of this invention to provide a specimen cutter which is hand-held and which responds to force against the specimen sheet to start the cutting operation, and the cutting operation is provided only enough energy to cut through the specimen layer and not cut through the backing layer.
It is a further purpose and advantage of this invention to provide a specimen cutter which resiliently depresses when too much force is applied in the cutting direction.
It is a further purpose and advantage of this invention to provide a specimen cutter which will not cut through the backing layer when too much too much force is applied in the cutting direction.
It is a further purpose and advantage of this invention to provide a hand-held specimen cutter which is useful for application into an automatic specimen cutting machine so that specimens may be automatically cut and placed.
It is a further purpose and advantage of this invention to provide a hand-held specimen cutter which is controlled so that only the amount of energy is available to the motor to accomplish cutting out a specimen.
It is a further purpose and advantage of this invention to provide a specimen cutter which is adaptable to be used on a positioning machine so that the specimen cutter can semi-automatically cut and place specimens.